The Hype and Reality of Mindfulness - Nicholas Van Dam

MindStew

Today we speak with Dr Nicolas Van Dam, Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Nicholas is a clinical psychologist and directs the Decision Making and Affective Learning in Emotional Conditions lab or DALEC lab. There he investigates the things that make us most like robots, including predictable and algorithmic processes in decision making models, and the things that make us least like robots, including interoception, self-awareness, introspection and meditation. The focus of both streams of work is to help those with high-prevalence psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety, depression and substance-use disorders.

In this conversation, we talk mindfulness. We discuss the state of mindfulness-related research and the implications for therapists and clinicians.